Then Forever
by EnjoyingObsession
Summary: A series of memories act as an elegy for Roger Davis. Lovingly inspired by Paul Monette. Written in poetry format.
1. Days

days in the park

sun dappled gravel walk

and the homeless you saw children

I filmed reels and reels so

let that camera tell

it was true so true

know forever we walked

guitar slung with frail shoulders

back ground laughter

white noise yellow noise red noise

you play I sing I request on the bench

that happened you snorted

when I asked "anything you can't play Rog?"

as if it mattered

well everything did at the time

I was twenty-nine

you eight

and we grabbed greedy at that mirage

like we knew it wouldn't no couldn't last forever

but it lasted now or then I guess

filming for life but you played for now

so arpeggios acoustic lazily drift out

as string plucked with eloquence

wasn't that you Rog?

who carried away with leaves

to the sky

since you had no weight none at all

we'll fly you'll carry me

but I weighed you to the ground

oh that was me

but at the time

oh at _that _time it was just

guitar chords August forever it almost lasted

in a second it was gone like maple and Halloween candy

and swimming pools back in Scarsdale

where nothing was real not like home

in that gritty permanence that marked

your cell counts but couldn't we grip on to

me giggling and the private school girl feeding birds

paper bag crumpling and Rog you smirking

as if all was perfect as perfect as that final August

don't cry now for no mistake

we were perfect you know it had to have been

my Kodak book reminds me always

days in the park like screenshot beauty

love it blink and it fades away


	2. Eat

you and I drinking coffee

garbage on the metal table and your paper crumpling

so I had milk you black with extra sugar

or you couldn't live with your magic drink

and cigarettes $4.49 plus tax

in this state at least

you breath clouds rising

a dragon exhaling on the fire escape bars

thirty degrees in winter even you persisted in not quitting

Rog that was your excuse

what was mine for not forcing you? but so stubborn

and thinning too you wouldn't eat

too nauseous too tired too everything but I tempted you with

anything French-fried chocolate coated barbecued salty shaken not stirred

still nothing and your cheekbones are frames hanging skin so pale

as if depressed sale rack clothing drooping from plastic hangers

under fluorescent ugliness

count my metaphors Rog, you might notice

that sorrow buried in the freezer aisle with microwave lasagna

will he try this? or not

I think experimental drugs the guilty one

or just your fatigue but he will not eat

though I tried my love

Breyers for dinner, would you like that?

with whiskey and maybe a little fat for your ribs

and no more coffee

like frustration how could I make you

so dreaming about you and food

like you used to eat so much the fridge was empty

just a vessel for whiteness and egg cartons

but hunger was a place and time receding from us with your body

so fading

and you in front of the mirror gaunt and complaining about your plunging weight

and me so cruelly _if you would only eat_

I tried blame I tried casserole

everything for nothing was the trade

and you across watching me eat feeling fat

like more of me and so much less of you who asked for this

empty microwave

clean stove where has Rog gone

and forgive me that moment I felt you would be so fine if only you could eat

like a hundred yesterdays ago

how did we miss that my friend

when you sat across from me

and anything happened for it could like Kraft Dinner going down

it used to

so miracles didn't happen

on doctor's orders the Ensure in a case from the grocery

you'd drink that always listen to the doctor never me

fuck if only you had listened to me we wouldn't stand pharmaceutical waiting for

pill cases so stand up straight you but you wouldn't

or couldn't who am I to tell

but almost believed just couldn't the way your eyes so grey and cold

like unscrubbed kitchen sinks you had to have been blue back in the day

now watery as you were going blind

but that seems another story

yet you were in pain and I couldn't make you eat

at all not for all the money in the world

me at the clean table

dinner for one

you went to sleep long ago it's seven forty-five

and somehow I feel full though

haven't tasted since lunch at one

like loneliness at a restaurant my own apartment

with emptiness across from me so far

and suddenly I wouldn't

or couldn't

I just didn't eat

not for you

or for me


	3. Song

paper sheafs neatly lined tossed everywhere so careless

you wrote cursive loops so small and skinny like those long fingers

and printing tiny how could you read it but you must have for

those songs stayed alive in your guitar

I remember you polishing that awful smell and it gleaming

like a car with fresh gasoline and an oil change shining powerful in noonday sunshine

on our window seat so important it filled your spot when you were away

so glorious an instrument but your songwriting not

painful and frustrating as withdrawal you sitting for hours head down

trying to fill up your brown black gold guitar case with impossible music

that grinds at twisted strings and runs away whispering in your ear and twirling 'round the room

oh not easy nothing ever was for you Rog writing like a poet and a magician

can he conjure riffs like spells so spectacular? you did once or twice you were good

but not so good that it came easy like to the greats Grateful Dead and Billy Joel

(or so you claimed)

I believe you were good not that I would know

if you were here Rog, you'd know

you knew everything about guitar

and almost nothing for writing it was hard

sweating with frustration writer's block you searched like a huge room with only one door

and a padlock can you find your way out to the sheet music behind the door

Rog you knew it was there

so close yet so far and you tried with effort unmatched to pull the clefs out of a hat

that didn't go so well

those days of you the table and pencils broken lead on the floor

punching the wall and me not knowing what to do

music's not beautiful it isn't haunting like Sounds of Silence

it's painful frustrating bleeding fingers inky hands headaches torn strings canceled gigs

brittle drumstick tape and paper money so exchanged like dogeared lyrics

that was it

you knew the underside of vocal unheard melody

like thrush in those last few months on and off of the breathing tube

couldn't sing can't write not anymore and your throat white with oppurtunistic infection

music to you it didn't come easy

beauty is pain repeated 'till your cocoon splits open but it never did

not at twenty-nine your final song it ends with an echo

a silent bow

thank you New York City my love

and goodnight


	4. Friends

in my mind it was always us but I am biased

towards the future we didn't begin that way

you a room mate with more cash than me for half checks and bills

that piled up unwanted intruders on the dirty kitchen counter

next to Mr. Clean (unused)

and a box of corn flakes $2.30 off on sale at the grocery on 13th and B

so you moved in with cardboard taped boxes brown large rumpled from

eleven flights of stairs Collins helped carry I squinted down through glasses

from the top of the echoing stairwell

boots squeaking and you swearing you had a beard I was a little intimidated Rog

but you had money from gigs musician you told me

with a real rock band and only nineteen but you claimed almost twenty

yeah twenty next year you hardly legal but I digress

you played anxious us hearing the first time mistake on the second bridge

we didn't notice how could I

so room mates first and sparring partners in the day

we haven't argued in so long my friend but oh how we did

like in '88 you had such a temper like explosives and dynamite so loud

with a deep voice and husky you yelled and me refusing to listen

I ignored so well you slammed things without leave we fought

like the Spaniards and the British only never agreeing on who won

it was war between us over dirty laundry bill paying smoking inside girlfriends swearing cleaning up you never did and nitpicking

eventually giving in both of us brings me to your third title friend

it didn't happen in one day or one year but somehow creeping through our veins

it just happened we watched "rented" stolen videos your head on my shoulder and I with chips that we agreed on truce sour cream and

onion all dressed you didn't mind

with Oreo cookies you licked sweet I crunch loudly together we couldn't eat alone

wonderful melancholy crazy horrid amazing confusing necessary us friends

you vould never imagine two so different but not really we both hid like children

from thunder afraid of emotion but somehow got along between the suicide of your princess and snorting crack and lesbianism it came to

us not easily but naturally

unlike money which didn't come at all not back in the day at least

I refused to work you refused to do anything at all not until your glory was born

where is my song screaming withdrawal fury and tears oh April

we'll try again if you'll return I patted your shoulder consoling it didn't work

but we stayed together like room mates with chains

to this god forsaken loft papery messy frozen in winter baking in July heat

why didn't we leave oh we couldn't just had to slide open the rusty door for another

year of sadness together life sucks doesn't it Rog?

now the loft and me we wait for redemption with our other half you

ghost music draped around the ceiling amid empty pipes and dreams of the

nineteen eighties

best friends where has the time gone flying away birds in winter I became older you grew up for real

come back and we'll play rogue again my favourite rebel in grunge jeans and army surplus boots but you had something true about you

even a drug addict redeemed

you taught me about forever the thing is, it doesn't last not even a little bit

it ended with a flash and I reached back into the past with a pale arm grabbing in the dark at whatever solace I could find in sun

bleached sheet music on the bench and the graveyard in beautiful June

best best best best friends couldn't you stay for that

I thought it meant something like candles to you and your second chance at glory with Mimi chica

now fades the past just yesterday afternoon realizing I couldn't remember your father's name how could I?

you in sorrow you left me with clothes folded so artificial in your room and memories of gut laughter that clung to tightly to a decade not

long past but unreachable like you my love

I ape closure like acceptance so false and you hated that with rebel passion

I promise for sure if you come back home again

knock softly on the concrete I'd open up for you and we can be room mates sparring partners best best best best friends just once more


	5. Notes

you used to leave me notes

sticky yellow or peel off white, grainy like pencil lead

or inky pen and your cursive, tall and skinny like you with broken joints

and my printing small and neat was your opposite with perfect spacing

taped messy on the door the counter or my pillow like a message in a bottle

tucked in the laundry crinkled and surprise out fell a piece of us

_at Mimi's be back at 12 Rog _mine _your turn for the dishes! srsly!_

and whole days we sat apart with nothing but Post-Its between us

a whole world scrawled with short forms only I could understand

we are close aren't we or _were_ close at the very least

I saved them all Rog did you know in a box under my bed I wouldn't lose them rereading over and over in weeks after your death

staining them salt watery and dog-eared but couldn't let go of my fragments of you like letters from Santa Fe

cheaper than long-distance and more descriptive my poet companion you almost tasting sand and loneliness between your chicken

scratch lines but you would not give me an address so I couldn't write back

oh never mind you came back to sticky notes mundane but so real like artifacts of you

now it couldn't have been that long apart could it? only six months but anyways…

these words grow painful frustrating like medicine your list Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor and antiretroviral shopping list let's play doctor and nurse you be my patient love

CD4 percentage charts but this mystery novel is spoiled for I already know now the twists and turns

when we thought your experimental juice was working but it didn't

oh how did we fall for that? but perhaps it made us somewhat happy for three magical days 'till more testing and needle sores on

your arms and the villain we found out you had progressed into AIDS so I kept a journal of your ailments and it filled right to the

brim and I saved that too and started again writing as you wasted away from forever

you wrote at the hospital on the tray with your left hand wrong hand as your right was developing KS it hurt too much but you kept

on making me songs with no tunes as the guitar was taken away

and promised not to read until _Until _which was the unspeakable and I snatched poems fragmented unlike your old work home

again filing sheafs and crumpled blue lined like sadness your work so different more elegy and no love songs

dedicated to lime orange cherry lemon jello and Hot Brunette Nurse No.2 who changed your bandages twice a week so you wrote

those days but why couldn't you dedicated a song to me? and you said _because they all are_ oh my friend let's send notes again

flashlight under the covers addressed to Death and maybe you'll reply if I burn them like cigarette smoke drifting from the jungle

gym fire escape towards you in the clouds

RETURN TO SENDER

could you write me back maybe please and tell me what you told me again

explain folk rock versus country for the zillionth time and give my regards to the rest of your broken half-baked generation rotting in

HIV denial and carved stone like your last letter to me but I knew the name and date of birth and date of death already so why

couldn't you have just told me goodbye

come let's sit together by the grubby window again please talk just anything you want just you and me like best best best best

friends that I said before let me see you and we'll have those days back bantering giddy with you Rog and no need for crinkled

Post-Its

scribbled in melancholy vanished


	6. Blame

blame like snowflakes rests in tiny pieces

almost unintelligible and indistinguishable melting on the shoulders of those who suffer for the personification of sadness

I could go on and on

notebooks filled to the brim stuffed margins and bleeding blue ink

whole days and nights of people places events to blame

smudging my thumb in charcoal dust leaving a dirty print on those that led to your

downfall Rog

like Bill Clinton oh those politicians and their tangled games fragile as a spider web

and just about as complex weaving through history religion and glory attained

then curled up in history books sun bleached and crinkled like sixth grade memories

press guilt-ridden fingers against the FDA for their sins

"redeem us" to the AIDS epidemic but nothing forgotten at least by those brave tear streaked soldiers of friends that stood by wishing

away regret

and counting cells

drug addict or victim you could never decide for the syringe once pressed heavy couldn't take away its glassiness from your arm you still

felt it in your sleep you told me

so we push our blame on the heroin or the needle or the dealers or those far away lords in bright sunny countries that rest on laurels

sewn from graffiti blood and dopamine

and we in our infinite frustration as we count the days that slip by our fingertips

we look for another reason another character to wrench our grief from us and turn it into anger for I never minded anger

just burning aches in my stomach and fingers and you with fading hair and the awful sarcoma

I'd do anything jump off a bridge into the Hudson freezing and muddy just for some glorious peace mind

you sit concentrate on the TV noise tinny and cheerful breathing heavy into the oxygen cup and I think maybe I can fault your parents

for they must have some role in this once-act play perhaps it was your upbringing

and when that ran out of steam cold and dry

my emotions dark and leaking spilled onto god

I hate him you know hate hate hate

couldn't scream it loudly enough or hurl objects against the wall it couldn't make up for anything I felt inside

I _hate _god, I HATE Him fuck it just couldn't contain me broken and stinging

he did this to you I know it like cellophane on the toilet seat a practical joke

thanks for the motherfucking punch line

but when all was said and done there had to be more to it for god didn't seem to be listening

suppose he was busy condescending to the rest of your damned to hell generation

so blame it curled up inside of me dark and empty and painful like an ulcers

gnawing at the could-haves and would-haves of our years together

and why I hadn't stopped you Rog

and this monster addictive blame hurled on you all my innards

you almost swallowing it with pills I yelled meaningless for how could I blame you my love? as easy as Satan I guess it possessed me

wanting just to end this awful melancholy this great and terrible sadness

wait look out the ward's window Rog

past white plastic blinds and smells of illness

it is snowing out bitter white flakes

that bleed down the windows sprinkle the sidewalks then swept into the hot gutter melt

fading on the shoulders of New York City


	7. Kiss

I dream of this one thing this beautiful remorse

I'd clutch my sweaters dry 'till you'd wear them clean Sundays after antigen testing

at the clinic streets off

my beautiful Rog fading by black moon windows

sighing at the city raindrop nights

guitar waiting patiently like a faithful dog, sagging and tired next to you

'oh play me please' for my owner is absent I'm afraid

strings untied untuned unkempt like sweaty hair on feverish evenings

that stretched through early numbers three o'clock, four five six

and it would please break in the morning let him rest

Roger is my lover he is my patient

he muddles me in regret and all that has ever happened

we hold wrists gazing bloodshot eyes so sullen

he likes music and sleeping late into those snowy noons

gazing out the window from bed November light seaping through paper blinds

tangling wispy fingers in my musty sleeping shirts of sweat and next mornings

he doesn't like getting up

Rog you listening to my poem? no you didn't like leaving my side

that last wonderful year we spent dreaming in morrows

fumbling with chapped lips so secretive you grasped me quite gently

the door creaks surreptitiously and I lean on you warm and scrawny

squinting quite unaware at me Rog you did and I caress your cheek

run my fingers over the oxygen tube and plastic tape

and kiss you and murmur 'that's good'

as nice as July midnights on the roof by the silver parapet and smoky sky

there are still more reasons why I miss you

such as your cigarette breath and cloudy eyes when I visited you at MHC

or song for me I remember that very well Rog darling

those misty hospice evenings slurring into each other but you steady

clutching my hand like a rock in a stormy sea

but poetry run thin for you Rog so I will end soon

I adore you my rag doll vagabond beau

in these faint January 'days' that haze with recollections

I thought I woke to find your rough-lipped breathy kiss

bedtime sheets unraveled

messy pillows moved

and you perhaps in my mind or in my arms


	8. Then Forever

be my music, love

curl around the room when you aren't there

hymns rising from the bench but absent

like the night time moon pale grey

silvering the counter with shadows and neon red clock

Rog flies away this beautiful evening

out of the cracks of hospice care

months after denial ran you still sit in phantom pose

strumming the guitar most competently

songs for me that tangle your strings

I listen quite attentively for your voice

chord of F major and arpeggios rising

through the stained pipes of the ceiling to celestial heights

and you were home with me _with me _WITH ME

like a celebration I watch you breath oxygen cup air

and just like that you stop say "love you, kid"

so I knew it could be alright if only the count didn't get too low

but through bleaker days you're faint and skinny you play

harmony deep wipe tears pray abstractly

to the deity currently on duty

"thank you for this evening for I couldn't be without him tonight"

not tonight this winter evening that feels like summer

dreaming of leaves tangled green and wet you sweating and the pavement

hot underneath us wait could it be true?

you're lying next to me feverish in bed

damp beautiful with an emaciated frame

a bruise in the hollow of your cheek

and blink weak and murmur quite raspy your voice

"_we're forever, no?_"

take him now, sail off and away because we've had forever

I've drank it in sweet and painful and glorious like strawberry ashes

kept you in my grasp fought and burned to the end

and that glowing ember that wouldn't come there would be no celebration and no mourning

just grey fuzzy sheets, almost-moonlight gently touching our skin connected

me, cold and quite exhausted with the radiator breaking

and pill bottles lonesome plastic by the side

mythology crawls in by the door and an Angel of Death

savouring your cool fingertips for the last time and your heart

organ tired but faithful trying so hard like an old horse bound for the glue factory

I breathe in your face

words don't get spoken; unnecessary and not magical

we delight in _we _for the last few minutes that we could and then

_and then_

Then Forever

Rog, oh how you drift away quickly

I almost miss it but don't


End file.
